A former Napanee man faces animal cruelty charges after smuggling hundreds of endangered animals into the country. 32-year old Andrew Fruck pleaded guilty to trying to sneak more than one-thousand tortoises, turtles, boa constrictors and pythons past border guards. but, they were found hidden behind panels of Fruck’s van, last year, when he and his family, including his kids, were returning to Ontario. The prosecutor said they found a mix of live and dead animals in Fruck’s Niagara Falls home — and 30 bags of dead rodents in an upstairs fridge. At the time he was running a company called Rodent Kings.
He and his wife Tricia were both previously convicted of cruelty to animals when they lived in Napanee. The 12-hundred turtles were returned to their habitat in Louisiana.
